Pink Floyd will never die, even if Roger “Syd” Barrett and Rick Wright have already left this planet. The Pink Floyd musical business entity, which I imagine still has David Gilmour making the decisions, has agreed to partner with with music company, EMI, for another five years. Yes, EMI describes itself as a “music company,” which seems to encompass production, but in Pink Floyd’s case, all that’s left may well be distribution. The four continuing members of Pink Floyd since Syd left assembled and performed together for the last time for Live 8, which amazingly is now five years in the past.
If EMI believes there is still money to be made on the Pink Floyd brand, let’s hope it will be with something fresh. There will be no new Pink Floyd music, even if David Gilmour does manage to spit out a new album. EMI will probably take the safe route and simply remaster the released albums yet again and package a new “best of” compilation. Another Dark Side of the Moon release, or perhaps Blu-ray remasters of already-released concert videos, would be welcome and commercially successful. What I — and possibly many fans — would like to see is the release of high quality recordings of some of Pink Floyd’s more interesting works.
The Man and the Journey
The Man and the Journey was the concept that Pink Floyd took on tour in 1969. These performances consisted of two acts, each the length of an album. The first follows twenty-four hours of a person’s life, from daybreak to daybreak. The concept was a little weak. “The Man” contained pieces called “Teatime,” in which the band would sit at a table on stage and be served tea, “Doing It,” which is somewhat self-explanatory, and “Afternoon,” a sort of working-man’s blues song that helped to inspire Spinal Tap’s jazz improv phase. “The Journey” was a bit stronger. Many of the pieces were taking from or ended up being other, released Pink Floyd songs, so this was never made as a studio album. There is quite a bit of genius in it, so a legitimate release would be appreciated.
Here’s a low-fidelity recording of “Afternoon.”
Eclipse Suite
The Dark Side of the Moon is still one of the best-selling albums of any band, of all time, globally. When Pink Floyd first took the concept on the road, there were some significant differences from the version millions of listeners know and love. Without having been in the studio to record or to play around with synthesizers and backmasked tape yet, “On the Run” was a guitar-based jam. Without back-up singers, “The Great Gig in the Sky” in its earliest form made use of a preacher’s recorded voice and an organ rather than a piano.
Alan Parsons, the recording engineer of Dark Side of the Moon, made the studio album sound perfect, but it would be amazing to hear a high-quality recording of the raw, prototypical Dark Side of the Moon that was performed on tour in 1972. There are common bootlegs with these performances, but they are plagued by production problems and low audio quality.
Here are “Speak to Me,” “Breathe (in the Air),” and “On The Run” from 1972 — but a really poor recording. The tempo is laid back, much moreso than the official studio recording.
This is an early version of “The Great Gig in the Sky” with organ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Omp0yfhnsM
There are other musical gems from live performances that have only been available on bootleg recordings, like early concepts of the tracks that ended up on the Animals album, written and performed live before the songs on Wish You Were Here.
There is reason to believe that EMI has quality recordings in their vaults. It’s likely that any EMI releases will be only those that they expect to be commercially successful, like a 40th anniversary edition of Dark Side of the Moon. If that’s the case, give us bonus features, like a second disc with the 1972 concert recordings remastered by Doug Sax.
Art: Vic Singh